Schools in Special Measures

[tosca925]

Could someone help me out and explain to me what happens to a school in special measures? I know what it means and also why the school could have been put in to SM via Ofsted, but.....

 

DO they throw money at the school to get it out of SM?

How does SM affect ICT?

Has anyone here been at a school who has been put in SM or come out of SM?

 

I am really interested to knw about the ICT side of things with a school who is in SM or maybe put in SM.

[Quackers]

The school i am at was in special measures 7 years ago, and they had more money given to them to try and help. Some of this was used to buy new pc's/servers make the suites look better.

[russdev]

As rule lea will ask the head to leave and they will bring in a new head. An lea advisor of any subjects areas that may be of concern will be assigned.

 

Then a plan is agreed between Link Advisor aka heads lea line manager, LEA advisor, head and slt.

 

It will involve lea bringing in people from other schools to get an idea of best practice. Main thing in these situations is for school to have life breathed back into (hence why a new head often from outside area even lea is brought in).

 

Often while some extra money is thrown at school it is linked into plan agreed with LEA.

 

I always wanted to do that be brought into a school in special measure to boost/modernise ICT provision etc

 

Russell

[russdev]

If going for a job in a school in sm one thing to say at interview and be upfront and say something along lines

 

"look I am being hired as direct result of school being in SM, I will advise and help you create a modern ict provision and give you my professional advice. But for this to work and success I need the full support of SMT otherwise any hard work will be lost..."

 

Lay it down online I will make this school proud of ICT but needs a nothing counted... nothing discounted approach to it...

 

Russ

[GrumbleDook]

If you can get hold of the last OFSTED report to see what areas they failed on you can also look at what are the areas that can be helped with embedding ICT in the classroom and things to support how staff teach or lead the school.

 

Common areas will be ineffective use of data to inform staff and students or targets for students or when tracking students. This can lead to poor KS3/4 results as intervention is left too late or the curriculum is just plain wrong.

 

Depending on who the SLT/SMT at the school are you either get entrenchment to try and fix the surface problems (got to get the results for this year up so we will throw lots of money at intervention for the year 9 and year 11 failures!) or you will get the complete rebuild (We have to build it from the ground up ... we will not hit our targets for this year, or maybe even next ... but we will make wholesale changes to turn it around!)

 

Special Measures can be an opportunity ... but there needs to be major addressing of what the problems are. If you can get a list of what they are and what the recommendations from the senior inspector are then you have an idea about what direction the school is taking.

[DSapseid]

I work at a school that went into special measures a year before i started a came out a year after i started. They threw money at us we bought shedloads of new laptops/desktops with it to modernise what was allready there.

 

Expect mass panic when you get the dredded phone from HMI to say that are coming for a suprise visit to see how your getting on. You suddenly have every member of staff wanting stupid things done now. I ended up working 10+hour days during the three days notice that they give you!

 

 

We came out of special measures to quick for our own good (2years) and we therefore were not given our final 3rd years lump of money! So for the last 2 years i have had no meny to spend unless i beg for it.

 

Just remember that its not you HMI are coming to look at its the teachers!

 

Dan